No less than 500 migrants landed alongside the Florida Keys during the last a number of days, prompting the momentary closure of an remoted nationwide park, officers mentioned.
About 300 migrants had arrived in small boats on the Dry Tortugas Nationwide Park — about 70 miles west of Key West — over the New Yr’s Day weekend. The Nationwide Park Service introduced Monday that the park was closed to permit regulation enforcement and medical personnel to judge the migrants earlier than transporting them to Key West.
The park service mentioned the closure will final for a number of days.
Like different elements of the Florida Keys, the park has lately seen an inflow of migrants arriving by boat from Cuba, based on the park service. “Refugee arrivals require quite a lot of sources from the Sheriff’s Workplace as we assist our federal regulation enforcement companions make sure the migrants are in good well being and protected,” mentioned Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay in a information launch.
In a separate migration, greater than 160 migrants arrived by boats in different elements of the Florida Keys over the weekend, based on the Monroe County Sheriff’s Workplace. On Monday, 30 individuals in two different teams of migrants have been discovered within the Center Keys.
No less than 88 of the migrants are from Cuba, U.S. Customs and Border Safety mentioned in a tweet.
In an tried touchdown, crew members aboard two cruise ships rescued about two dozen migrants in small boats on Monday. Crew members kind Superstar Past rescued 19 migrants and the Carnival Celebrations crews discovered 5 individuals about 29 miles northwest of Cuba.
Federal companies, together with Homeland Safety Job Pressure — Southeast and the U.S. Coast Guard Southeast, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Workplace have been managing the “spike” in migrant landings since Saturday, the sheriff’s workplace mentioned in a information launch.
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The wave of migration is a results of inflation, meals shortages, and financial turmoil throughout Cuba and different elements of the Caribbean. Florida’s migrant landings is the newest border scramble the U.S. has confronted in latest months.
To name consideration to the Biden administration’s immigration insurance policies, border-state governors have despatched migrants in buses to different cities. In December, three buses of migrant households arrived from Texas close to the house of Vice President Kamala Harris on Christmas Eve months after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis despatched almost 50 migrants to Martha’s Winery
U.S. Border Patrol and Coast Guard alongside South Florida and the Keys have been experiencing the biggest improve of migrations by boat in almost a decade with migrants largely from Cuba and Haiti.
Since Oct. 1, 2022, the Miami Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol has skilled “over a 400% improve in migrant encounters,” mentioned Chief Patrol Agent Walter N. Slosar in an announcement.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Workplace criticized the federal response to migrant landings on Monday. U.S. Border Patrol advised the sheriff’s workplace that the federal response to a few of the migrants arriving could have to attend a day — “aggravating the mass migration disaster within the Keys,” the sheriff’s workplace mentioned.
“This exhibits an absence of a working plan by the federal authorities to cope with a mass migration subject that was foreseeable,” Ramsay mentioned.
Contributing: The Related Press